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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136116">Play Destroy [A Bucky Barnes Fanfiction]</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peppermintxcrazy/pseuds/Peppermintxcrazy'>Peppermintxcrazy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Obsession, Romance, Sisters, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:09:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30136116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peppermintxcrazy/pseuds/Peppermintxcrazy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mmm, Sergeant Barnes. If I wasn't supposed to kill you, I would definitely love you. Then again, why not both?"</p>
<p>A BuckyxOFC Fanfiction</p>
<p>Loosely follows the events of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. [PLAY DESTROY]</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>"These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder / </em><em>Which, as they kiss, consume."<br/></em><em>- Romeo and Juliet, </em>William Shakespeare</p><p>
  <span class="u"> <b>[DESCRIPTION]</b> </span>
</p><p>"Captain America is dead. Let him stay that way."</p><p>When the Flag Smashers appear and start to cause chaos in the world, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes must unite and work together to defeat them. However, in the midst of a power struggle between the anti-patriotism group and Sam, Bucky finds himself caught in Ethelinde 'Effy' Zeller's storm, and she has no intention in letting her new plaything escape that easily.</p><p>Both have something the other person wants. Whether they'll get it before one kills the other remains to be seen.</p><p>
  <b> <span class="u">[CAST]</span> </b>
</p><p>Victoria Pedretti is Ethelinde 'Effy' Zeller <br/>Sebastian Stan is Bucky Barnes<br/>Erin Kellyman is Karli Morgenthau<br/>Anthony Mackie is Sam Wilson<br/>Daniel Brühl is Helmut Zemo</p><p>
  <span class="u"> <b>[PLAYLIST]</b> </span>
</p><p>// Play Destroy - Poppy ft. Grimes // Lo Vas A Olvidar - Billie Eilish ft. ROSALIA // Gangster - Labrinth // PAIN - King Princess // It Will Come Back - Hozier // Training Wheels - Melanie Martinez // SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK - Joji // thousand eyes - FKA Twigs // my tears ricochet - Taylor Swift // i was all over her - salvia plath // Bust Your Knee Caps - Pomplamoose // DKLA - Troye Sivan ft. Tkay Maidza // Always Forever - Cults // Killing Eve - Benet // Breezeblocks - alt-J // Dinner &amp; Diatribes - Hozier // Verbatim - Mother Mother // Pretty Bones - yeule // As The World Caves In - Matt Maltese // Toxic - Anthony Willis // Runs in the Family - Amanda Palmer // YKWIM? - Yot Club //  It's You, It's Me, It's Us - The Newton Brothers //<br/><br/>These songs and others can be found in the playlist "Play Destroy" on Spotify.</p><p>//</p><p>A fanfiction loosely following the plotline of <em>The Falcon and The Winter Solider</em>. All rights reserved.</p><p>
  <b> <span class="u"> <em>["Gonna cut your face / And break your favorite toy."]</em> </span> </b>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. [Prologue]</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>I see him shrouded in purple. Did you notice? The way he moves like smoke, here a moment and gone the next. </em>
  <em>T</em>
  <em>here's a purple-violet haze that surrounds him, the edges swirled with blue. Do you think he sees the same thing when he stands in front of the mirror? Do you think he asks himself why? I do. I ask myself all the time. Why he is that color, why I am my own. You know, my favorite color used to be green because that's your color. I've always loved the way you wear it, like a flickering flame. If trees could be made of green fire. But lately I've been seeing something new, and I won't lie when I say it's intrigued me. </em>
  <em>Y</em>
  <em>ou know me, you've seen the way I try to grasp at smoke, at ghosts. I always miss. Perhaps it is because I am too slow, or because I don't know enough. But something is changing. Do you feel it? I know. I feel it too. This time, I'll be able to make it happen. I'll be the person to catch the ghost, to hold the smoke. I'm close. I know it. When I catch him - and I will - I won't ever let go.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><br/>You'll hold him forever? </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><br/>Until he's dead in my arms. And even then, I would've shown my hand at being able to keep a ghost. I'll hold the haunting, too.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>//</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Something is a-brewing, and to celebrate the release of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, I decided to release a cheeky sneak peek into this new fic. Hope y'all enjoy &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. || The Floorboards ||</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was a ghost of his several former selves. What was left of him was small.</p><p>Every morning Bucky would wake up, it would be in a cold sweat. His dreams were anything but, the memories as painful as a knife to the brain. He would go through it all again, the things from his blurred past. The murders, the deaths of those who were guilty and just there at the wrong time. <em>Ghost story</em>, they had told him to be. <em>Leave no trace, not even memories. </em>And that is what he had done - that was what was done to him for a time, too. Not anymore. They were back, sharper than they had ever been. </p><p>He wouldn't have it any other way.</p><p>When he had been in Wakanada, there had been a moment where all he had to focus on was his own healing. He had been helped and slowly, his mind had started to unravel like a tangled ball of yarn. Each knot, each twist, Shuri and her team would smoothen out. Ayo was a constant presence, a careful eye that would make sure he wouldn't suddenly snap. He wanted to feel hurt by her untrusting gaze, but he had given so many people a good reason to not trust him. Or, the Winter Soldier had. That was what Shuri would tell him, at least. But deep down, Bucky knew that he and the Winter Soldier were one in the same. Ayo must've known this too. </p><p>There came a point where he had been given the all clear. Ayo had said the words and while the moment had been excruciating, that wait for the monster to wake, it had not come. <em>You are free</em>, she had told him as he cried. <em>You are free.</em> It was all he had ever wanted since he had first been drafted into the war all those years ago. Finally, he felt as though everything that had happened was being cut away. His bonds broken, he could start to move on.</p><p>Then there had been the war. The one where he had fallen. It had happened all at once. One moment he had been hugging Steve, had smiled at him despite the upcoming battle, had run alongside him into yet another war. Then the next moment he was watching his fingers turn to dust, and when he went to take a step forward he felt his legs collapsing, and so was he, and he was gone before he had even hit the ground.</p><p>A moment of oblivion, nothing more, nothing less. It both started and ended with a blink of his eyes. Suddenly he was getting back up onto his feet in the same area that he had fallen in, the grass now overgrown. He saw T'Challa, saw Sam, saw others that he had never really spoken with before. Not Steve, though. It was then that a man came forward, telling him that the battle had moved elsewhere, as he opened a portal for them to walk through. </p><p>He had fought in it, no questions asked. He had walked through the portal and saw Steve. All his life Bucky had followed his friend into battle. He wasn't about to stop then, no matter the confusion. In the end they had won, even with the casualty that was Tony Stark. Bucky had not cried when Stark had died. He did not feel as though he deserved to shed tears for the hero. He had kept that same thought as they attended his funeral days later, standing with Sam and Wanda in front of the lake. By that time, he knew that five years had passed by in that moment of oblivion. More time that had slipped past him, nothing he hadn't experienced before. It would be okay. Now that the world was right again, their lives could continue. He could move on. He had help, one that would stay with him till the end of the line.</p><p>But he didn't. Despite the words, despite the vow, Steve had left him in that unfamiliar world. There was no anchor for him now. When Bucky had left the lake, he left it on his own, leaving the shield with Sam and his aged best friend behind. </p><p>At first, he had not been upset over Steve's choice. He would not stop the man from getting the life that he wanted. Bucky would've done the same had he had anyone back in their old life left to love, if there was still an old part of him left. He knew that he could never return to that time, though, not with his memories and the hauntings of his past selves hanging around in his head. Besides, it didn't seem as though Steve wanted the job of caring for him anymore. Steve had saved him enough times. The end of the line was here, and it was Steve who walked off the platform and left Bucky where he was, scrambling for....</p><p>Something. Normality, if that was even possible. He tried, though. He listened when they gave him a curfew, rules for him to obey so he could keep his freedom. He attended his meetings with his therapist, even if he hated them. Dr Raynor was a relentless force that refused to take the bluffs he would spit her way, or the walls he would build between them both. There was a rough tension between them - nothing that was really her fault, though. Bucky knew that he was a difficult case study. Prickly, she had called him once. But why should he be open with her when she was not going to be a constant in his life? Why would he be open when people were always leaving him? Besides, she wasn't on his list.</p><p>He had a list. He had ticked off quite a few names from this list of his. His atonement. Well, that's what he would tell Dr Raynor. There was perhaps a little bit of spite mixed into it as well. Fuck those who had used him, abused him, played with his head. If he was going to suffer in the aftermath of the Winter Soldier's reign, then so would they. Only those who really deserved it, though. There were some on his list that were good. Casualties caught in his past life's crossfire. He would get around to them soon. Maybe. Before that, though, he could spend his time on the enemies. It was always more fun playing with them, bringing them down to their knees. Yet it never made his nights any easier, knowing that those who had taken advantage of him were now being punished. It wasn't enough to keep the nightmares at bay.</p><p>When he had woken up that morning, it had been under the haze of another terrible dream that clung to his peripheral vision. He saw the shadows of other Winter Soldiers around his apartment, from the stack of dirty clothes on the chair in the corner to the condensation on his windows. They watched him as he floated around the rooms, each one with a face he had not seen in years. Not since he had stumbled upon them in that damn place in Siberia, one bullet lodged in each of their skulls. He had never been close to them, yet they were a part of the ghosts that would follow him about wherever he went. Not as common as the rest, but still there, and with them he would see his own face reflected back at him. One of his past selves, still with cold fingers digging deep into his shoulders.</p><p>They were with him when he had watched the news on television that morning, joined by another that had stuck by him even if the original hadn't. The Winter Soldiers and Steve watched from the walls as someone new emerged, holding the shield that had once belonged to Bucky's closest friend. His face on television, the smile, the cheers, all of it had gripped Bucky's heart and squeezed it tightly. It was... it was all <em>wrong</em>. Who was this stranger? What was he doing with the shield, Steve's shield, <em>Sam's</em> shield? What did he know about carrying on that legacy? <em>Nothing</em>, Bucky thought as he stood up and began packing his backpack. <em>Nothing.</em> </p><p>He never thought that Sam would give up the shield. That had been inconceivable in his mind and in Steve's. Their discussion that fateful day before Steve had left had been easy. Natural. Despite their fraught relationship, Bucky knew that Sam would be the best option to become the new Captain America, especially compared to him. Bucky had never wanted to fight. He had not signed up to be in that war. He had been conscripted into that one, and then the next, and the next, and on and on it went. He had blood on his hands and demons in his mind that would've made the public nervous, made <em>him</em> nervous had he had the shield. Unstable. That was how the government had described him in his hearing. Too unstable to be out in the world without a check, a watchful eye. So his red leash held in the hands of HYDRA had been swapped to blue, the government holding on tight, and the collar around his neck was electric should he ever even think about skipping his mandatory sessions. What kind of Captain America would that have made him, had he taken on the shield and the mantel and everything that came with it?</p><p>So it was decided. With his goodness, his calmness, his ability to think clearly, critically, with sensitivity, Sam would get the shield. Sam would be the new Captain America, the one that could represent the twenty-first century that Bucky was still trying to acclimatize to. He would be able to do it by himself. He didn't need Bucky getting in his way. It's not like they were ever close anyway. Friend of a friend, that was who Sam was to Bucky. An acquaintance with his own things to do. But a man who Bucky could trust, because Steve had. Steve had trusted him with his legacy. Steve had trusted him with the shield. </p><p>Yet here it was in the hands of another. With a frown Bucky turned the television off, throwing his backpack over one shoulder as the ghosts watched. No. This would not do. He pulled on his glove, grabbed his keys. Decades of being a monster did not come without its benefits. He had his own tricks that would help him find Sam, to find a reason behind the betrayal. It couldn't be asked through a text message. It would have to be face to face. He would even be a reminder of the man who had believed in him, in both of them, if he had to be. Anything to pull the truth from the man who had given up Bucky's <em>everything</em>, the only thing he had left as a reminder of his past self, of Steve, of a better world, a better <em>him</em>, for...</p><p>Why had Sam given it all up? A question Bucky was sure his ghosts were asking, their breath fogging up the mirror he walked past as he left his bedroom. He had seen the words written on the glass, turned to try and catch them before they disappeared, to no avail. Why had Sam given up the shield? What had he given it up for? </p><p><em>Nothing</em>, Bucky thought as he left the apartment. <em>Nothing</em>. In turn, leaving Bucky with... </p><p>The ghosts. </p>
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